Focus Your Marketing for Better Results
You don’t have to do everything.
Double-down on your top strength.
When you start to learn marketing, you’re going to get pulled in many different directions... which way should you go?
Double-down on your top strength.
When you start to learn marketing, you’re going to get pulled in many different directions... which way should you go?
One expert: “You must do video, and upload it to Youtube & Facebook!”
Another expert: “It’s all about connecting with Instagram influencers.”
Yet another expert: “The fastest way to build an email list is by organizing a Telesummit!”
An SEO expert: “None of the above builds you a truly long-term asset unless you’re posting SEO-focused articles to your blog regularly!”
Whom do you believe?
Running in Circles
The truth: Progress in any positive direction -- taken far enough -- yields vast treasures. When you go farther than the majority in any good direction, you get disproportionately larger benefits.
Imagine you’re on a journey. You follow one expert’s guidance and go North for awhile. Then, a shiny strategy in the West makes you do a 90-degree left-turn and you go there for some time. Then you realize that the treasures of the NorthEast are far more worthwhile to you, so you take a sharp right turn. Then, a friend that you deeply trust, says she’s getting great results in the South, so you do another sharp right turn.
You’re essentially going in a big circle.
No matter how fast you move, if you do any big turns, you’ve lost the momentum of the original direction.
Persistence in Any One Direction = Excellence.
There’s a profound compound effect in skill-building. The more consistently you do something, the better you get at it, faster.
For years, I wrote only once in awhile. And for years, I hated to write every time, and wasn’t very good at it.
3 years ago, I committed to writing multiple times a week. To this day, I’m still consistent with this habit. I’ve grown in my writing skills more quickly in the past 3 years than in the previous 30.
Fits and starts = painfully slow skill-building.
Apply this to your business and marketing: are you following one strategy for a month, then you get bored — or see a shiny new strategy — and you chase a new thing?
If so, you’re not giving yourself the chance to become deeply skillful at any one thing. No wonder you’re struggling to get results.
You don’t have to be everywhere.
You can grow a thriving business with any ONE platform… if you become excellent at it.
Whether it’s Facebook, Youtube, Podcasts, Instagram, Medium, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin, etc.
If you choose one, and learn & practice it well enough to become a pro, your business will succeed more than others in your field.
Unless you’re a generalist marketing expert (like me), you don’t have to be on multiple social media platforms, and be doing different marketing strategies.
What if you get bored?
For any one marketing platform you choose, there is so much to learn.
You get bored only if you aren’t pushing yourself to new heights on that platform.
Keep observing the people who are excellent at it. What can you learn from them?
When was the last time you took an advanced class about that platform? Or at least watched some Youtube videos about the best strategies for this year?
Eliminate boredom by deeper exploration of that one platform you've chosen.
Which Platform To Choose?
Which platform are you intrigued by, and enjoy learning?
Which platform has your ideal audience on it?
If you could only choose 1 platform to become excellent at, to be known for, what would it be?
Write down your answers to the above questions. Is there a platform or strategy that shows up in all of the answers?
If there’s still more than one option, use a randomizer tool to help you select one. When the random answer comes up, were you happy about it? Or were you secretly hoping for a different option on the list? There you have your answer.
Know that any of the major platforms -- Facebook, Youtube, Podcasts, Instagram, Medium, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest -- has hundreds of millions of people, out of which probably tens of thousands are your ideal clients... more than your business will ever need.
Focus to win.
Don’t try to learn everything before choosing one.
The perfectionist will say: “Yes, but I need to take courses in all the available platforms, do my due diligence, before settling on one.”
Do you realize how long that will take you? Maybe hundreds of hours.
And then, just when you think you’ve learned them all, you’ll come across 5 other significant platforms or strategies you didn’t even realize existed until that moment.
It’s a never-ending cycle.
Instead, if you just choose one, then spend the hundreds of hours applying yourself in that one direction, you’ll get business results far more quickly.
And if you focus your curiosity on that one platform, there’s never ending things to learn there, always new ways to get better at it.
If I were to choose only 1...
...I would choose Facebook for marketing.
Of all the platforms I've tested, Facebook (especially using Ads) has made it the easiest to reach the most number of the right people, simply because it's 3-5 times larger than other platforms. Despite the recent scandals, it's still where most people are. And Facebook usership is still growing.
I don't really use Facebook to post about my personal life, what I'm eating, etc. 95% of my time on Facebook is spent on my business page.
This is why of all the social media platforms I could teach, I decided to focus on Facebook Marketing Training.
At the least, I hope you'll let something go…
I hope this article inspires you to at least let go of some activity you think you “should” be doing in your business.
For example, for years I struggled with finding the right images for my blog posts, and blaming myself for not posting enough images on social media.
Recently I came to a realization: I’m not willing to spend the time and energy to get great at images. It’s not where my competitive advantage will be.
So you’ll notice in my blog posts recently I stopped including images.
Also, I don’t create any video thumbnail images (for my Youtube & FB videos.)
I’ve decided to let other marketers thrive in that arena. I will focus on my thriving with writing and videos... definitely enough to learn there!
Even 2 modes of content (writing and video) is more than you might need to do. I’m a content e xpert, so it makes sense for me to do more in my field.
If you are feeling stretched for time & energy, focus on just one, so you can become better at it much more quickly. That's where the best results are.
Another expert: “It’s all about connecting with Instagram influencers.”
Yet another expert: “The fastest way to build an email list is by organizing a Telesummit!”
An SEO expert: “None of the above builds you a truly long-term asset unless you’re posting SEO-focused articles to your blog regularly!”
Whom do you believe?
Running in Circles
The truth: Progress in any positive direction -- taken far enough -- yields vast treasures. When you go farther than the majority in any good direction, you get disproportionately larger benefits.
Imagine you’re on a journey. You follow one expert’s guidance and go North for awhile. Then, a shiny strategy in the West makes you do a 90-degree left-turn and you go there for some time. Then you realize that the treasures of the NorthEast are far more worthwhile to you, so you take a sharp right turn. Then, a friend that you deeply trust, says she’s getting great results in the South, so you do another sharp right turn.
You’re essentially going in a big circle.
No matter how fast you move, if you do any big turns, you’ve lost the momentum of the original direction.
Persistence in Any One Direction = Excellence.
There’s a profound compound effect in skill-building. The more consistently you do something, the better you get at it, faster.
For years, I wrote only once in awhile. And for years, I hated to write every time, and wasn’t very good at it.
3 years ago, I committed to writing multiple times a week. To this day, I’m still consistent with this habit. I’ve grown in my writing skills more quickly in the past 3 years than in the previous 30.
Fits and starts = painfully slow skill-building.
Apply this to your business and marketing: are you following one strategy for a month, then you get bored — or see a shiny new strategy — and you chase a new thing?
If so, you’re not giving yourself the chance to become deeply skillful at any one thing. No wonder you’re struggling to get results.
You don’t have to be everywhere.
You can grow a thriving business with any ONE platform… if you become excellent at it.
Whether it’s Facebook, Youtube, Podcasts, Instagram, Medium, Twitter, Pinterest, Linkedin, etc.
If you choose one, and learn & practice it well enough to become a pro, your business will succeed more than others in your field.
Unless you’re a generalist marketing expert (like me), you don’t have to be on multiple social media platforms, and be doing different marketing strategies.
What if you get bored?
For any one marketing platform you choose, there is so much to learn.
You get bored only if you aren’t pushing yourself to new heights on that platform.
Keep observing the people who are excellent at it. What can you learn from them?
When was the last time you took an advanced class about that platform? Or at least watched some Youtube videos about the best strategies for this year?
Eliminate boredom by deeper exploration of that one platform you've chosen.
Which Platform To Choose?
Which platform are you intrigued by, and enjoy learning?
Which platform has your ideal audience on it?
If you could only choose 1 platform to become excellent at, to be known for, what would it be?
Write down your answers to the above questions. Is there a platform or strategy that shows up in all of the answers?
If there’s still more than one option, use a randomizer tool to help you select one. When the random answer comes up, were you happy about it? Or were you secretly hoping for a different option on the list? There you have your answer.
Know that any of the major platforms -- Facebook, Youtube, Podcasts, Instagram, Medium, Twitter, Linkedin, Pinterest -- has hundreds of millions of people, out of which probably tens of thousands are your ideal clients... more than your business will ever need.
Focus to win.
Don’t try to learn everything before choosing one.
The perfectionist will say: “Yes, but I need to take courses in all the available platforms, do my due diligence, before settling on one.”
Do you realize how long that will take you? Maybe hundreds of hours.
And then, just when you think you’ve learned them all, you’ll come across 5 other significant platforms or strategies you didn’t even realize existed until that moment.
It’s a never-ending cycle.
Instead, if you just choose one, then spend the hundreds of hours applying yourself in that one direction, you’ll get business results far more quickly.
And if you focus your curiosity on that one platform, there’s never ending things to learn there, always new ways to get better at it.
If I were to choose only 1...
...I would choose Facebook for marketing.
Of all the platforms I've tested, Facebook (especially using Ads) has made it the easiest to reach the most number of the right people, simply because it's 3-5 times larger than other platforms. Despite the recent scandals, it's still where most people are. And Facebook usership is still growing.
I don't really use Facebook to post about my personal life, what I'm eating, etc. 95% of my time on Facebook is spent on my business page.
This is why of all the social media platforms I could teach, I decided to focus on Facebook Marketing Training.
At the least, I hope you'll let something go…
I hope this article inspires you to at least let go of some activity you think you “should” be doing in your business.
For example, for years I struggled with finding the right images for my blog posts, and blaming myself for not posting enough images on social media.
Recently I came to a realization: I’m not willing to spend the time and energy to get great at images. It’s not where my competitive advantage will be.
So you’ll notice in my blog posts recently I stopped including images.
Also, I don’t create any video thumbnail images (for my Youtube & FB videos.)
I’ve decided to let other marketers thrive in that arena. I will focus on my thriving with writing and videos... definitely enough to learn there!
Even 2 modes of content (writing and video) is more than you might need to do. I’m a content e xpert, so it makes sense for me to do more in my field.
If you are feeling stretched for time & energy, focus on just one, so you can become better at it much more quickly. That's where the best results are.